“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now: for all of its seeming sophistication, the self as generally seen by science is only science’s interpretation of the Sinful Self in mechanistic terms.

(Long pause.) Both religion and science see the self as primarily heir to flaws, decay. Only science’s Sinful Self operates in a framework in which there is no sacramental redemption. Science sees the world as rushing toward its own dissolution, and the self as the mechanistic system running down from the moment of its conception.

The Sinful-Self concept causes you to expect the worst in any given situation. In that light, hopeful expectation seems quite out of place, and unworkable. Without the dictates of the Sinful Self, however, you can begin to sense the contours of the natural self, or the natural person. You can begin to sense your own good natures, in other words, and those basic natures are automatically optimistic.

They automatically expect the best from any situation. They represent your natural persons. As Ruburt begins to understand the “artificial” characteristics of the Sinful-Self concept, then those natural characteristics of the natural person will more and more emerge. It will be, for example, less difficult to have pleasant expectations, for they will begin to bubble up by themselves into the mind.

It is true that the Sinful Self carries with it a group of patterns or reactions; methods of dealing with problems, and so Ruburt’s beliefs along those lines have colored his reactions, his plans, his dealings with you through the years. In the past, however, those methods seemed to make sense: if you believe that the self is sinful or deceptive, then you must indeed set up barriers so that you allow expression while monitoring it very carefully at the same time.

The barriers become unnecessary when you realize that the self is not sinful. I use the word “sinful” in Ruburt’s case because of the early church connections in particular. Science’s flawed self still carries the same import, however, the idea being that while science does not deal with values, so its says, it misleads itself considerably in making such statements, for it projects the worst kind of values both upon mankind and the rest of nature—so even if you are not tainted from religion’s old beliefs, it is difficult to escape such ideas.

(Pause at 9:10.) Many of Ruburt’s beliefs have changed, but the core belief in the Sinful Self has been very stubborn. While you do not possess it in the same fashion, you are also tainted by it, picking up such beliefs from early background, and primarily from your father in that regard.

The natural person can be evoked, and its responses elicited, particularly through touching and through statements of love and affection. The Sinful Self feels it does not deserve such attention. Love is therefore surrounded very carefully by all kinds of barriers by both science and religion, and in your own lives you could now be much more demonstrative in those regards. For they offer a natural therapy.

(Pause at 9:26.) This means that you deal, even consciously, with vast areas of probabilities, with various combinations, with ways in which identity itself will be defined and experienced. You will react to your definitions of yourselves. In that regard the Sinful-Self concept represents an exaggerated, distorted version of man’s recognition that in certain ways he seems (underlined) less sure of himself than the other species, less at ease, for he has taken upon himself the creative recognition of uncertainties (all intently.

Even these, however, act as automatic learning devices, and left alone they themselves trigger the necessary creative procedures that would begin corrective measures. When the belief in the Sinful Self is held, however, the very corrective measures themselves are often not trusted.

(Long pause at 9:37.) In Ruburt’s case the core belief, again, in the Sinful Self was hard to differentiate, because it could appear in many other guises. It dropped its most obvious religious coloration for some time, and could simply appear as an unusually strong dedication to work and discipline. The Sinful Self has no use for play, because it believes so fervently that left alone it will indeed be lazy or childish, or fritter itself away—or, looking at it the other way, it fears that left alone it will only play, or will be slothful. You see this most clearly in Protestant theology.